The present invention relates to arbitrating access to a data processing bus, and has particular relation to arbitrating access among a multiplicity of competing processors.
Many processors may share a single bus. The processors do not have any special bus arbitration features, but they do have internal memory. Each processor may have different requirements for the amount and frequency of bus access. A method is needed to give each processor only the amount of bus access time required. A method for locking the bus for exclusive access by a single processor is also needed.